BBC Three investigates LGBT hate crimes

Online UK broadcaster BBC Three is lining up a 3x50mins doc series investigating hate crimes in the US, as the country reels from a mass killing in a Florida gay club.

Love and Hate Crime will comprise three separate films exploring hate crimes – one about a transgender woman murdered by her boyfriend, another about a young Texas man killed by his boyfriend’s family, and a third about two white teenage girls took part in a notorious Mississippi race hate killing.

The docs will explore the psychology and motivations of such crimes, a topic made more relevant by the massacre in Florida on Sunday, in which a Isis-sympathiser with suspected homophobic beliefs shot dead 50 people.

Top Hat Productions, whose founder Darren Kemp executive-produced BBC Three’s Reggie Yates: Extreme Russia doc, will produce the show for BBC Three.

Kemp, who sold a minority stake in Top Hat to Greenbird Media in March, executive-produces, and Claire Sillery is the commissioning editor from BBC Documentaries.

The BBC’s head of commissioning, documentaries, Patrick Holland (pictured), announced Love and Hate Crime as part of a batch for the UK’s pubcaster ahead of a session at the Sheffield Doc/Fest event in the UK.

Upcoming for BBC One is My Parent’s in Prison (WT), a 1x60mins programme from True Vision Productions and about children whose parents are in jail.

BBC Two is getting The Hospital: Life and Death in a Week (WT), which comes from Label1 and offers access to goings on at London’s Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust; and Sir Chris Hoy: From Velodrome to Le Mans (WT), which tells the story of British cycling legend Hoy. Grant Wardrop Productions is attached to produce the 1x60mins doc.

Arts- and culture-focused BBC Four and BBC Wales are getting Surviving Aberfan, a 1x60mins show from Testimony Films. It will tell the story of the worst disaster involving children in modern British history, on October 21, 1966, in which 116 kids and 28 adults died in a south Wales mining village.

“The new series and singles we are announcing today use a range of filmmaking techniques offering unique and privileged access to some extraordinary stories,” said Holland, the former FremantleMedia UK managing director. “Whether engaging with big issues like the crisis in the NHS or the explosion of hate crimes in the USA, these are films that will resonate powerfully with the concerns of the audience.”